Whatever

I don't know how people get mad about this shit still. I just turn off, because for the last decade Michigan football has been either a disappointment or in a brief interim period that sets you up to be disappointed. But yes many many people still get fucking furious about Michigan football for some reason.

I'm tired of talking about it. I'm tired of this cycle that always seems to be at the bottom. I'm tired of this toxic-ass fanbase screaming at stuff. I could muster some takes, I guess, but I've already said them and anyway they seem beside the point. December was nice since it lacked football. 2018, so far, is bad because it had football.

In a situation like that I'd rather not talk about football. Especially because I have nothing left to say. Maybe it'll be better next year. Maybe it won't. Either way it's a meaningless distraction on the way to the grave. Eat at Arby's.

idk why people have to get so worked up about others being wrong on the internet. Oh, someone @'d me, better get pissed off because they have a different opinion. It's almost like fucking politics, which are verboten around these parts. You're never going to convince certain people.

people are influenced by what they read, often people reading a detracting opinion and it can make a big impact. A non-controversial example of this is people have spread false information and marketing about genetic modification techniques for years now and detractors have begun to reverse the damage done.

I guess to that I would just say that GMO's and their efficacy are scientifically verifiable. Whether or not Harbaugh should be on the hot seat or whatever people are saying is a matter of opinion (however shitty that opinion may be)

...that demands a return on investmest. We are not the only fan base that demand a return on investment. I think a good comparison is Texas A&M-just fired a good coach, Kevin Sumlin. Sumlin had a good winning record similar to Harbaugh, but they fired him and spent $75 million on Jimbo Fisher because they want a national championship. So far, l think Harbaugh's performance would elicit the same fan outrage at Texas A&M and other big boy teams...Texas, Florida, Tennessee, USC, etc.

So I disagree with others on this website who think this is a Michigan fan base problem. It is not. It would be the same response at a dozen or more other programs who expect to compete for championships and are paying astronomical dollars to win. In terms of dollars spent, Michigan is one of the worst values among the big boys.

If paying huge dollars to win doesn't demand a return, then stop paying huge money and be like the Arizonas of the world who are content to go to any bowl game and pay their head coach $3 million a year.

In the Big10, the coaches who are outperforming Harbaugh in terms of expectations & dollars are Urban Myer, Mark Dantonio, James Franklin, Paul Chryst, Pat Fitzgerald, and Jeff Brohm. Harbaugh is currently 7th on this list (tied with Ferentz) and Scott Frost, PJ Fleck, and DJ Durkin could ascend next year.

The Rich Rod hire remains the most colossal mistake of this program. It was almost like having your old dad (who was kind of lame) leave the family, and mom finds a stepdad. He’s cooler, younger, but he’s not the old dad, and he makes a lot of mistakes trying to replace your dad. But ultimately, even after four years, he just can’t be dad, and mom kicks him out and brings back old, lame dad. Familiar, yet inept.

This sums up eight years of the program, and while this was all happening, all the kids now in college (or who we’re recruiting) have watched all the cooler dads in the neighborhood win father of the year awards.

I still believe Father Jim will fix this. I don’t know how he fits into my dad analogy; perhaps he was a guy on a mission in Africa who returned and replaced lame, old dad.

Alabama had tried their best to hire RichRod the year before, and his offense was the best show in town with Pat White and Slaton, not to mention he was the creator of the read spread whatever offense. He even had a decent defense at the time.

It's tired and old. UofM's decline started in the later years of underachieving LC who would have selected Mike DeBord as his replacement. Mike DeBord! Now that would have been a 'colossal mistake'. With no succession plan in place, and LC unable to identify an acceptable successor, Martin was left to his own devices. Martin & Coleman botched bringing Les Miles on board. That was a also a debacle. So, somehow, they came up with RR who looked like a pretty good choice at the time, but many of the students, fans, alums, and former players at UofM (who falsely pride themselves on embracing 'diversity') never gave the Hillbilly from WV a chance. He wasn't a 'Michigan Man'. I agree that RR failed in Ann Arbor, but never got a lot of help or support, unlike the two 'Michigan Men' that followed him. They're not doing so well either. But don't try and blame all of this on RR. That's just sad.

is fire the entire offensive staff and give the new people a go next year. If we don't at least win the big ten then Harbaugh is gone and our rebuilding ends up being 10+ years. I still really like Harbaugh and I think he is a good coach but he doesn't quite seem to be making the perfect decisions.

4-3...9-5...6-7....10-4...plus 3 losses in his seventh year. that is dabo swinneys record at clemson.so who do you want to coach michigan? four years into his career would you have guessed clemson of all teams would now be a dominant program?

diminish the accomplishment because of a 10-3 record and especially scream bloody murder after a 70-33 ass-whooping in a major bowl by a school like WV. UM fans wouldn't have the patience for 8+ years to reach NC level. People are already poopooing 2018 as a critical year and it's only year 4 after 3 better years than Dabo had.

We should quit comparing JH to D-bo. D-bo first year was a interim partial year that he took over for little Bowden, he also won the ACC in his 2nd year as well has his 4th* year which was actually his 3rd season as the head coach. JH hasnt accomplished that yet, still not better than 3rd in the division. Also, D- bo didnt have the resume JH had, that was his first ever head coaching gig, he was only a position coach up to that point. JH was put up on a pedestal and labeled as elite with the likes of Urbs and Saban, to now not expect those types of results is the problem.

Harbaugh is a great coach and I think he is a great fit here but he has made plenty of questionable calls in recent games and this season. So given that, he needs to make significant changes this off season. What he has done with this team is good, maybe great, but not the best. 10-3,10-3, 8-5, and no starting QB heading in to a 4th season looks like the wrong direction to me. If you want a program like Alabama or Clemson, then you have to have high, high, high expectations. If our expectations are 8-4 then you will continue with a mediocre program whose best win with a 3rd year coach is Purdue who barely made a bowl game.

And after Nick Saban retires, there may never be another Alabama. That's how dominant his program has been. Nobody should put those expectations on any program because that's probably impossible to achieve.

and a case can be made that he's the best college football coach of all-time. Comparing any other CFB coach to him is like comparing a given basketball player to Michael Jordan or Lebron James; it's fine to use those players as a point of comparison but it's not reasonable to evaluate a player's value based on that comparison.

Granted, other guys would have pissed it away and underperformed in relation to the resources at their disposal, so he certainly gets credit for that. But there's no way he'd be able to do this at most other Power 5 programs, as there'd be some type of resource constraint somewhere.

Recency bias. If Saban was as amazing of a coach as you say, he would have been dominant at all his stops. His first HC gig was Toledo, where he was 9-2 (quite good for that time, but not amazing). He then went 34-24-1 at MSU (not terribly impressive, but did finish his last season tied for 2nd in Big Ten). Then 46-16 at LSU, with one national championship but also two 8 win seasons and one 9 win season (very good, but not all-time great caliber). He followed that with a 2 year HC at Miami, where he went 15-17 (not exactly Lombardi caliber). Now at Bama with a 126-20 record and 4 national championships (excellent when viewed on its own). As another poster stated, his work at Bama has produced great results, but that was a very unique situation. Even his greater work in the SEC should be tempered by considering the atmosphere within that league. IMO, an all-time great coach should thrive wherever placed - Saban hasn't truly done that.

When Saban retires Alabama will hire Dabo Swinney and the tide will keep on rolling. Those SOBs are set for a long time.

Also, debating Saban's greatness is even dumber than suggesting that Jim Harbaugh's job security isn't ironclad. Saban is one of if not the greatest college coaches of all time, and Jim is staying at Michigan as long as he wants to.

Thanks for keeping it real. I think the fan base has unrealistic expectations. Yes, Harbaugh is the best fit for Michigan. The last 3 years Michigan has been in play or has landed some of the top recruits in the country and have had two 10 win seasons. He has, by himself, made Michigan relevant again. The Big 10 is now the best conference top to bottom in the country with the best coaches top to bottom. I feel like I’m gonna be on here a year from now reading about all the unnecessary, uneducated hate and discontent towards staff and players. They play at ND, at MSU, at OSU next year with home games against Wisconsin and Penn st. If y’all are expecting a national championship with that schedule and the state of our O Line, get real. I’ve attached Bama’s 2018 schedule. I could see 10+ wins here for Michigan if this is what their schedule looked like.

Horses, man. The “mythological expectations” came from Program tradition, and Harbaugh’ Record, and the hoopla around his hiring. This is a man who went to three straight NFC championships with a team he quickly made a winner. The rationalization that thinkingUM would be a perennial 10-win seasons and have a conference championship appearance by now is too high is ridiculous. You do not pay Harbaugh top dollar to finish middling in the division. And the recruiting classes point to players who expect to win: Gary and Walker did not come here to play in and lose Outback Bowls.

I can come to terms with the team being young and realizing we were very close in most losses, but I am not going to hear this bullish narrative that the fan’s expectations are too high. Hell, Harbaugh’s own motto is to win every game, and to win championships. So these kinds of fan-blaming arguments are about as tiresome as blaming one player for a loss.

"The “mythological expectations” came from Program tradition, and Harbaugh’ Record, and the hoopla around his hiring."

What tradition are we talking about?? Since 1950 this team has won 1 national championship and a split one at that. From 1970 to 1974, Schembechler went on a Saban type run going 50-4-1 with 5 consecutive seasons of 1 blemish (loss or tie) or less. Can you name how many times Michigan has done that in the 43 seasons since 1974? ONE (1997). Even the great Bo never did it again. Only 3 seasons have they had 1 loss or less (1985, 1992, and 1997)--none in the last 20 seasons. They have had at least 3 losses in every season since the millenium excepting 2006 and 2011.

The 1997 season wasn't a continuation of the great Michigan tradition but a complete aberration of what this program has been over the past 40 or so seasons.

There is nothing wrong with having high expectations, but let's start by having a realistic reflection of where this program has been in the modern age of college football as opposed to comparing it to a world that no longer exists.

He should be given 5 years and then evaluated. See how he does after the year he fields a team that is a group of seniors he has recruited. Then you can evaluate his recruiting, development, and coaching. In the meantime, keep complaining-it will make you feel better.

This is the kind of attitude that has Michigan in its current predicament. People easily forget how far Harbaugh brought this team. I remember when Harbaugh was first hired the blog did a round table discussing how long It would take. Seth said 4 or more years, and he was absolutely right. Harbaugh stepped into a program that didn't have a QB, as well as back to back recruiting cycles that barely yielded half a class, and had them inches from the playoff in year 2. He's had to rebuild this program and people are ready to fire him because it didn't happen overnight. If you want to do that, then enjoy being Notre Dame, because if we toss Harbaugh that's exactly where we are headed.

He let it happen, though, and he shouldn’t have let it happen. Same thing with challenging the Higdon fumble: Harbaugh has mad lots of un-Harbaugh like decisions. Throwing deep on 3rd and 4th and 1 at end of game? Abandoning the run from the start.

Yeah man - he's been very un-Dude. That 4th down arm-punt (the one with 3+ minutes left) was a little odd and distressing. The offense seemed very vanilla for a Harbaugh squad, especially coming off several weeks of practice. They ran no trick plays (sometimes that gets a stagnant O going) and seemed to do the same shit over and over with no results. Is it me or did they not run any screens all year? I think a few screens to Evans/Higdon could've moved the ball especially when nothing else was working. Get it to those dudes in space, let them make a play.

They really didn't do anything to loosen up the offense at all. Frustrating.

That was definitely an off game for the coaching staff and it happens. It happens to every coach, even Saban. I'm not ready to get out the pitchforks over one game. I don't really have any quibbles with the way they coached this season. Young team and QB issues make it hard to draw up any fancy offensive schemes. After the Hoke and Richrod years I'm ready to be patient and see what they are building. I think doing anything else is crazy. You can't build a great program by firing coaches every few years and I think Harbaugh is a good coach. I also think a lot of fans have rose colored glasses when it comes to the past. 10 win seasons are a rarity if you actually look at history. It was an off year, so be it.